as you're pretty, so be wise
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: Ursa dreams of fire and finds it in a person.


**A/N: Frankly, I don't really care about Urzai. But I get prompts for it a lot on tumblr, and so this is a spruced-up version of a prompt I wrote back around Christmas. Surprisingly little of my characteristic nastiness to be found here, just some implied societal misogyny.**

 **I like the direction I took with Ursa's characterization. I drew some similarities between her and Azula.**

 **Disregards the comics.**

 **Reviews always appreciated! Oh, and if you're waiting on Snow...soon. Quite soon.**

* * *

 _"little girls, this seems to say_  
 _never stop upon your way._  
 _never trust a stranger-friend;_  
 _no one knows how it will end._  
 _as you're pretty, so be wise;_  
 _wolves may lurk in every guise._  
 _handsome they may be, and kind,_  
 _gay, or charming never mind!_  
 _now, as then, 'tis simple truth—_  
 _sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!"_

 _-charles perrault_

* * *

She dreams of her grandfather.

The country has called him a traitor. Her parents do not speak of him. They are trying to distance themselves from the stain on their family tree. There is no thought of rebellion in either of them, but whenever people look, all they see are the dishonored descendants of Avatar Roku. It is too late to salvage their reputation. A diseased tree will never bear good fruit.

She learns more about Roku and his crimes in school than she ever does from her parents. She cannot recall them mentioning him once. Perhaps they fear that the mention of him will awaken in her some foolish thought of rebellion. But she has no sparks at her fingertips. She is a lady even when she is a girl. Her gentle hands say nothing of her namesake. Roku and Sozin and the beginning of the war are as distant as the sun. Her world is much too tiny to touch anything so vast. She sits by her mother and practices calligraphy and embroidery and tea ceremony with gifted hands. She lives for compliments or an extra helping of dessert. What is there but school and home and doing what she's told?

But in the evenings, when she is left alone to curl in on herself and think, she dreams of her grandfather. She imagines what it would be to have fire running through her veins instead of blood. _There is no fire in her,_ she has heard her proud mother say a hundred times, and yet she dreams in shades of red hot enough to burn.

She knows it's a possibility by the time she turns ten. Their ages are close enough, and whatever her grandfather's crimes her family retains its nobility. Her mother is indirect in such matters, but Ursa learns nonetheless that her endless hours spent kneeling and perfecting every proper art have all been to assure her marriage to Prince Ozai. What better way could there be to cleanse her family's name? If Fire Lord Azulon smiles on the union, all Roku's crimes will be burned away forever.

Ursa learns of the second prince from a distance. Curiosity is not becoming, so she listens but never asks. _Confident,_ they say. _Reckless. A firebrand._ She doesn't know how to feel about that. She does not like things that surprise her. When she hears stories of the older prince, already old enough to lead soldiers into battle, so level-headed and compassionate and firm, she thinks she would like that more, but Iroh is married. So Ozai it is, coal-haired and sharp-tongued, and what Ursa wants has nothing at all to do with it.

The only concern is that the Fire Lord would perhaps be reluctant to marry one of his sons to a non-bender. She stares at her fingers and wonders why there are no sparks there. How could her grandfather have been as powerful as he was while she has no fire at all? She wonders if the world would look different if she could bend.

She tries to capture fire with ink instead. It comes out all wrong, of course; how could water and paper do justice to light and heat and radiance? But she tries, over and over again, sure that if she keeps trying, something will change.

Then her mother finds the stack of ink paintings and throws them on the fire, screaming at her daughter to _stop with her silly useless paintings_ and _get back to your studies, you little nit._ Ursa watches her work curl and blacken and disintegrate. She doesn't cry, not because she's afraid to but because now they really do look like they should.

She stops trying to paint flames.

* * *

When she is fifteen, she meets him for the first time at a court function. He is hardly three years older than her, but he seems huge. When she is introduced, she bows. She does not tremble. She does not know fear.

She has been to the palace before, and it never changes. It doesn't occur to her that this place might be her home someday. There is an unreality to everything about it. Her robes and jewelry are very heavy, but she feels as if she's floating, invisible, through the throng of people. The noises and the smells are overwhelming. She is sure it is a dream.

She settles down in a chair by the wall and sits by herself, watching musicians play and the nobles mingle. Without warning, a hand catches her shoulder and she looks up to see him. The touch is inappropriate. She sits like a statue.

"You're the granddaughter of Avatar Roku, aren't you?" He is broad in the shoulder and so very tall. She can feel the heat of his hand even through her many layers. She likes his voice. He alone feels real, and his touch brings her back down to earth.

"Yes, Your Highness." She doesn't know whether to say more. She keeps her lips closed.

"You must be talented." He smiles, and it catches her. She wants her parents to appear. She is feeling things she doesn't understand.

"I can't bend," she says simply. Her hands are folded in her lap, but they feel cold. The chatter of the people around them feels too loud. She doesn't know how to put any of her feelings into words. She cannot look at his face; it would be rude, but more than that, she doesn't think she could ever look away again.

"No matter." He catches one of her hands and pulls it to his lips. She snatches it away. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

"Your Highness," she says, perhaps a rebuke or a question. She doesn't know what to do. This is the prince, and she must please him, but her mother's edict not to let men touch her rings sharply in her ears.

"My apologies. You're lovely." All her life she has wondered what it would feel to have fire course through her, and at last she knows. Her mother's lessons and all her rehearsed niceties have vanished. There is only the prince and this feeling in her skin, and nothing before has prepared her for it.

"I'm sorry," she says, and then she rises from the chair and hurries into the crowd. Her cheeks burn, and she has no idea what is wrong with her, but she is certain she's ruined everything.

His kiss burns on her hand, so hot, too hot.

Her parents do not know to ask, and she does not tell them. They are pleased with the evening's proceedings. They see only a first meeting. She sees ruin and flame and hears her mother's voice hiss _whore_ in her ears.

In bed she cries, silent tears dripping down her cheeks, a hand up her sleeping robe as she dreams of fire on her lips instead.

All is not lost; Ozai remains unwed, and the invitations continue. She goes back to the palace again and again, endures him again and again. His eyes catch her and hold her. She is not afraid of him. She is afraid of herself and her mother, and she does not know what this is.

* * *

When she is seventeen, he begins sending her gifts. She smiles at each and murmurs her thanks as dresses and robes and jewelry fill her closet, as vases of fire lilies crowd her windowsill. But there is no proposal, nothing at all, just the gifts. She doesn't know what that means. Each time a servant comes, Ursa hears her mother exclaim in frustrated disappointment. Her whole family is waiting, and Ursa is afraid that she has destroyed her future before it could start.

"Perhaps she's too plain," her mother laments with a glance across the room at her daughter. Ursa pulls needle and thread through cloth and pretends, as always, that she cannot hear. "Fire Lord forgive me, but Ilah was hardly a beauty..."

"It will come," her father says. "Why shouldn't it?"

One day Ozai summons her to tea. It is a more informal occasion than any other they have shared. Her heartbeat speeds. Her mother and all the servants bedeck her in one of the hanfu he gave her. It is pale blue. The embroidered phoenixes that spill across it are more fiery than Ursa will ever be. Jade and rubies and gold adorn her head and her throat. Ursa looks at herself in the mirror while the servants fuss. The proposal matters not, she thinks. When she wears his clothes and jewels and lives by her parents' edict to please him and thinks of him in the dead of night, she is already his.

The crowd for tea is small. There are so few people between him and her. The Fire Lord sits at the head of the table, but Ursa has eyes for only one person. She tries not to look at him, even as she feels his gaze burning into her. Once, when she glances up, he is smiling.

When their cups have been drained and the food eaten, Prince Ozai invites her to walk in the gardens with him. She likes it much better out here than inside. Roses and hydrangeas and cherry blossoms bloom about them. She stoops to smell a rose, only to discover that its scent is hidden underneath her jasmine perfume.

Fingers larger than her own pluck the stem from its bush. When she straightens, he offers her the flower. She takes it. Their hands don't touch. Not knowing what else to do, she tucks it into the collar of her robes. The thorns prickle through the cloth.

"It suits you," he says. "Anything would."

"Your Highness…" He has not touched her since that evening two years ago, and she aches for it. She remembers the heat. She does not look at him, afraid of getting caught somewhere in his eyes. "You are very generous."

"You deserve all I can give you, and more." They walk quietly. He does not touch her. She yearns in silence, closes her eyes, and smells ash.

* * *

When she is nineteen, her parents are despairing, and she doesn't know what she's done wrong. The invitations and gifts continue. They have spent countless scads of time together, but the prince is still a stranger to her. If only she had the courage to really speak to him, ask him all of the questions that trouble her.

Her mother is prone to rages. She wheels on Ursa and accuses her of destroying their family once more. Ursa sits quietly and accepts her anger. She deserves it, doesn't she?

"Did you let him touch you? Ursa, if you let him touch you—if you let him have you, he'll never marry you, and no other man will either!"

There are no other men; who would want to be caught romancing a woman the prince has so clearly laid his claim to? Ursa is alone, caught in stasis. Her future stretches before her, unknowable and unattainable, and all she can do is dream of fire.

She is just shy of twenty when he invites her to dinner. She dresses in all her finery, and she goes, and she doesn't know what to think when she discovers they're dining alone. His rooms are broad and smell faintly of incense and old wood. Those scents are drowned when the servants bring out food.

It is just the two of them. The table seems so small between them. When they are so close together, when he is right there, it is impossible for her not to look at him. She looks at his face at long last and does not look away. She takes in the angle of his nose and the deep gold of his eyes. His hair shines in the light. She wonders what it would be like to tangle her fingers in it.

She eats without looking away. Nothing has a taste. He smiles and she forgets what she was worrying about, forgets anything at all. She smiles. Nothing else matters, not the rest of the world or her parents or his father. Just them.

She drinks sake. Nothing matters at all. She has already done all she knows how to do. It feels beyond her control. What is the use of keeping herself so carefully in check now? Her future lies in ashes and his smile has already taken her.

The sky is black and dappled with stars when Prince Ozai rises and drifts around the table to rest his hand on her shoulder. Her breath stops. Her mother's words pound in her head. There are no servants left. It is them and the night and she does not trust herself. But even as she knows she shouldn't, she tilts her head upward when he bends down, and she tastes fire.

Her imaginings have been nothing to this. Ursa's most licentious nighttime fantasies are chaste in comparison with the hunger she feels now. Breathing does not matter. She feels fire on her lips and tongue and throat and wants nothing more than to drink it for the rest of her life. Her hands rip his hair from its bun. Control was abandoned at the doorway or with the last cup of sake or when she first spent a night with her hand up her skirt and her thoughts turned to lust.

The clink of his crest on the floor makes them both start, and they draw apart just far enough to see each other's faces. Ozai looks as desperate as she feels. She watches his tongue circle his lips and longs to kiss him again, to breathe fire again.

"Bed," he says, a growl or a hiss, something uncontrolled and wild. She doesn't know if it was a question, but she closes her eyes and nods, imagining her chin as the guillotine that will sever her future. Nothing matters anymore.

He strips the robes from her and covers every inch of her skin with his hands and his mouth. Every nerve is alight. She feels as if this is where she was meant to be, arching her back and gripping silk in her fists as he murmurs praise into her collarbone, when his mouth moves down to do things she has never even dared dream of. She screams without realizing it, and his eyes are hungrier than ever when he comes up again. He looks like a madman. She would be terrified, but she is on fire. His arms encircle her and his hair tickles her, and even as he mounts her Ursa has never felt more powerful.

She has heard it is very painful, but it does not hurt nearly enough. He fills her and kisses her and sucks at her exposed skin, but she is left wanting more and more, even when his nails dig into the curve of her hips and they come together with a sound like thunder. He mutters oath after oath and she orders _more faster harder burn me—_

Her mother does not matter in the ecstasy of it. Another scream rips from Ursa's lips and she wishes that the moment could last forever, drowning in fire, the moon shining in and the city laid low before them, Ozai's pleasure consummated with hers in the pulse of something sticky between her legs.

He pulls out. She lies in his arms. He strokes her hair and her breasts while pleasure continues to pulse through her with low murmurs.

She cries when the afterglow fades, when she realizes what she's done. She keeps her sniffles quiet, but he hears them just the same.

"It's ruined," she says, aware that she should not say this to him; how foolish can she be? "I ruined everything."

"Why?" He presses searing kisses to her neck. "Is being mine so unbearable?"

"Yours?" She doesn't know what to say. Tears are coming down her cheeks. The moon wobbles in the sky. She should throw herself off the balcony and save her mother the trouble.

"Father can burn," he says. She should shiver at that treason, but she does not. "I want you, and I will have you. You will marry me, won't you?"

"Oh…" Wind whips through the room, throws the silken curtains about. She wonders why she doesn't feel happy. She wonders if she wanted any of this at all. Suddenly the power that gripped her in the midst of it seems like no more than a pitiful illusion. This place, all along, has been a cage like any other.

He feels like fire. It is the closest she has ever come to the real thing.

"Yes."


End file.
